"Oh, my darlin'! I'm killed entirely."
"Wait till I take off your stilts. You will be all right as soon as you get to your feet."
"Tommy has laid the ghost," cried a girl who had last run away. At this the others came hesitatingly back. Mrs. Livingston half laughing, half crying was assisting Jane to her feet. Jane's face wore a sheepish grin as she shrugged her shoulders to make sure that they had not been dislocated. Harriet had thrown off her mask. Her white robe was blackened from the smoke and the fire from which she had rescued the singed banshee, and Margery upon returning to the scene was complaining that she had bursted half the buttons off her waist.
"There is your ghost, young ladies," smiled Mrs. Livingston. "Let it be a lesson to you to never forget your self-possession, never to be carried away by your impulses. Always use reason."
"Yeth. That ith what I did," declared Tommy.
"Why didn't you run?" asked Miss Partridge, who had remained near the scene, but at what she considered a safe distance from the apparition.
"I thaw a lock of Crathy Jane'th hair thlipping out from behind her mathk. The minute I thaw that hair I knew it. Then when I got behind her I thaw the thtiltth. You thee the light wath on the other thide. I could thee right through her drapery."
Now that the banshee had been "laid" the frightened girls could afford to laugh and they did.
Mrs. Livingston spoke again.
"Miss Burrell has fairly won an honor. Some of you observed her presence of mind when she rolled Miss McCarthy on the ground to put out the fire in the latter's clothing, thus possibly saving that young woman's life. For this you are awarded five red beads, Miss Burrell, for fire is red and fire is the enemy that you overcame."